Breaking: Facebook Updates Beacon — Facebook has just announced that they will be updating their Beacon system. Stories will no longer be published "without a user proactively consenting." According to Facebook here is how the Beacon changes work:

Official: Facebook Flips On Beacon — Reports surfaced yesterday, and now we have the official word from Facebook. Users will now have to opt-in to share purchases via Beacon: … It seems like a win for users, although I'm sure the ramifications of this announcement will be dissected and considered in the hours and days to come.

Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking — Faced with its second mass protest by members in its short life span, Facebook, the enormously popular social networking Web site, is reining in some aspects of a controversial new advertising program. — Within the last 10 days …

Facebook Executive Discusses Beacon Brouhaha — Facebook does not appear to be conceding much ground on Beacon — the program that informs a person's Facebook friends what he has purchased or posted on sites like Fandango.com, Yelp.com and NYTimes.com. — Earlier today I spoke …

Google Reader Gets Recommendations, Drag-and-Drop — Google has released two new features for its RSS reading product, Recommendations and Drag-and-Drop. — The Discovery recommendation feature suggests new sites a user may wish to read based on current subscriptions and (interestingly) browsing history.

Leopard is the New Vista, and It's Pissing Me Off — Before Apple makes any more smug OS-related attacks on Microsoft, it ought to take a good look in the mirror. — I'm not sure what ticks me off more about Leoptard (I can't take credit for that nickname—some Brit coined it) …

Google To Announce Wireless Spectrum Bid Friday — The Wall Street Journal is quoting "people familiar with the matter" saying that Google will announce a bid for the 700 MHz wireless spectrum Friday. — Google first expressed interesting in bidding in July, when it sent a letter …

Facebook Nabs $60 Million Investment from Li Ka-shing — While a lot of people were beginning to doubt Facebook's ability to raise more money after getting a lofty $15 billion valuation following a $240 million investment from Microsoft last month, it seems the stakes are not too high …

Spammers Giving Up? Google Thinks So — Bill Gates was wildly optimistic when he said in 2004 that the problem of spam would be "solved" by 2006. The volume of junk e-mail transmitted worldwide is still enormous. But a remarkable trend is underfoot, according to Brad Taylor …

Warner Music: We're totally screwed — I'm paraphrasing a little, but that seems to be the general thrust of Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s comments about the company's latest financial results. In a nutshell, Warner — which Edgar Jr. maintains is not a record company at all, but a …